Intentions
by thefairyknight
Summary: Tony attempts to confront Wanda about her intentions towards Vision. Because that was bound to go spectacularly well.


It came together at the end of a particularly ugly mission.

The whole thing had been a disaster from the outset. They'd gone in thinking it was some kind of alien invasion, and instead it turned out to be… well, something more along the lines of _demons._ The creatures had thrown around energy that none of them had been prepared to counter, vanishing in one place and then reappearing in another, cackling and chittering disturbingly the whole while.

They'd shrugged off most bullets, so Wanda's and Vision's powers had ended up being the most effective on them.

It was exhausting. The others had tried to cover their backs so they could focus, but that was easier said than done with demons popping into thin air just to jump on their backs or send them careening into walls.

And then they'd taken down the Vision.

Wanda wasn't entirely certain what happened. One moment he was behind her, focused on trying to hit the creatures without getting Warmachine in the crossfire, the next there was a brief flash of shock and fear from him, and then he was on the ground.

She had whirled around, seen him lying there, dark and still, with some odd energy twisting around him, and seen red.

The demons nearby writhed and fell to the ground. A few actually exploded into bits of ichor and gore. She dropped to her knees next to Vision, reaching for him, trying to find where he had _gone_ , momentarily consumed by the terrifying thought that she would not find him…

…Then she felt his mind again, and his eyes blinked open as the dark energy faded away.

"If you _ever_ do that again, I will…" she started, holding his head in her hands. "I will… just, don't do that again."

"I will endeavor not to," he promised her.

"People? Hate to interrupt, but there are still more of these things," Captain America informed them.

Wanda let out a curse in her native tongue and threw herself back onto her feet. Red energy flared around her hands, huge and bright, and she ripped one of the remaining creatures off of Falcon's back and sent it careening into another, smashing them both into the ground repeatedly until they stopped moving.

"Right. Good, uh, good recovery," Captain America.

"I will kill every single one of these _fucking_ creatures," Wanda declared.

"Looks like they're retreating," Black Widow informed them, over the communications system.

"Gee, I wonder why?" Falcon quipped.

When the last hostile had either been eliminated or retreated through their little rip in space time, and they had returned to the quinjet, Wanda sat down next to Vision and began checking him for any signs of lingering injury.

"I am not damaged," he informed her, quietly.

That seemed to be mostly true. The brushes of his mind that she gathered were as bright and soothing as ever, a calm, organized sea, deep enough to make her want to swim in it. There were no signs of darkness, no hint that he was wavering between states of consciousness at all.

"You have scratches," she pointed out, taking his wrist, focusing on the tiny marks criss-crossing over his hands and cheeks.

"They'll heal. Just like yours," he said, and reached over to gently touch the skin next to her eye – just below a particularly nasty scrape.

She looked up at him. His face was close. He was warm, he was near, and he was alright, and she wanted to kiss him.

He must have caught that, because his eyes widened minutely.

"Sorry," she said, letting go of his wrist.

"Please don't be," he asked, and curled his hand so that it was cupping her cheek instead.

Her mouth went dry.

"May I?" she blurted, before she could talk herself out of it, convince herself that it wasn't a good idea. Wasn't smart. Wasn't safe.

"I think… yes," he decided.

She leaned forward, her heart fluttering in her chest, and carefully pressed her lips to his.

The texture was strange. But they were as soft as human lips would be, and when she coaxed them, gently, they moved easily with hers, and tasted only faintly of metal.

Someone loudly cleared their throat from nearby.

Wanda ignored them.

"Um," Captain America said. "What just happened here?"

"I knew we would have to have this conversation eventually," Black Widow replied. "You see, Steve, when two people love each other very much-"

"God dammit, Natasha, you know that's not what I mean!"

"Swear jar," Falcon chimed in.

"That was a terrible idea," the captain griped.

"Oh, come on, Steve, you're helping to put Clint's baby through college. At this rate, single-handedly," Black Widow said.

Wanda could hear Warmachine laughing.

"Rhodes. Don't you dare tell Stark," Captain America sternly commanded him.

"About what? Your potty mouth, or Bewitched and Data over here?"

Wanda started tuning them out then and focused instead on finding the Vision's tongue.

In hindsight, she probably should have paid a little more attention to the rest of that conversation.

~l~

A few days after she and Vision crossed the line they'd been dancing around for months, she walked into the training center one morning to find it empty except for one person.

One person who should not have been there.

"What the hell are _you_ doing here?" she snapped at Tony Stark.

The man in question was standing at the far side of the room, wearing an Iron Man gauntlet and firing blasts off as some of the Warmachine's training dummies.

"Swear jar," he said at her, with false reproach.

"You're not an Avenger anymore. You're not supposed to be here," she insisted, trying to stamp down on the well of resentment that was practically fizzling at her fingertips.

"Actually, since I built this place, and pay for pretty much all of your toys, I can be here whenever I _want_ to be here," he informed her.

Now there was an unpleasant thought.

She turned to leave, to go find someone who could chase Stark out, or, at the very least, open up a different room for her.

"So I heard you're dating what's-his-name now," Stark said, conversationally. "Mr. 'I Am'. Robo-Messiah. Terminator Junior."

"The Vision," she told him, firmly.

"Vision. Right," he replied, firing off a shot at another practice dummy. "Poetic. Did he come up with that himself, or are you guys just really weird about nicknames?"

"Why don't you ask _him?"_ she wondered.

"Because I'm talking to you right now," he said. "You know, it's funny. It's almost a Romeo-and-Juliet kind of a thing, right? The woman who hates Tony Stark dating the guy who was made by Tony Stark. Star-crossed lovers and all of that fun stuff."

"I'm leaving now."

She started walking away again.

"A father worries," Stark declared, half joking, half not. "When his youngest starts hanging around with bad influences. The wrong crowd. The kind of people who might use him to get to his old man."

She stopped.

"A father?" she asked. "Is that what you think you are?"

"Well, I did I have a hand in the whole creation process. Probably the closest thing he's ever gonna get to one, so. Maybe? A little?"

"You're not a father to him. You're _nothing_ to him," she said, turning back around. He was looking at the dummies rather than her. She shook her head. "I hate you, Tony Stark. I have hated you for most of my life. And that hatred cost me… everything." She shrugged, hopelessly. "So I don't let it decide what I do anymore. I have no plans to 'get' to you. But even if I did? I would sooner die than use him for that."

"Romantic. I think I'm gonna tear up," Stark said, still not looking at her.

Red crackled at her fingers. She wanted to fling it at is head.

"What are you trying to do? Goad me?" she wondered. "I can be goaded. I don't think you would enjoy the results."

"Probably not," he agreed, and finally, he looked at her.

He looked… tired. Small. Like a man with too many hard years behind him.

It made her uncomfortable. Tony Stark was supposed to be energy, movement, flashy clothes and snappy comments, all arrogance and conceit and hollow charisma. Or he was supposed to be that desperate brilliance she'd brushed in his mind, the kind of self-centered genius that thought the world could be reshaped by a single man alone.

"He's in over his head with you," Stark accused.

She snorted.

"How would you know?" she asked. "It's been months. Like you said, you could be here any time you wished. But you never have been. What makes you think you know anything about him?"

"Because he's…" Stark started, and then stopped. "It's confusing for him, I get that. I wanted him to figure things out for himself. To make his own choices. I know he's not exactly as young as he is or as old as he could be. It's a whole new way of processing information, it'd be like if someone downloaded a human's brain into a computer, but in reverse. But I do know him. I've known him for years."

"He hasn't been alive for years yet," she said, wondering if he'd cracked.

"Not like this," he agreed. "But he's been around."

It clicked for her, then, with the things Vision had explained to her, and the things she had witness for herself.

"Your computer program," she realized.

"Jarvis. That's his name," Stark told her, as firmly as she had given Vision's name to him before.

"I…" she hesitated, her emotions a contradictory storm, warring in her breast. "I'm sorry about your friend," she finally said, surprised at what had won out.

"Don't be. He's not gone," Stark insisted, swiftly, as if he had some practicing on saying it.

"There is a baby in Clint Barton's house. He has the name 'Pietro'," she said. "He's not my brother, though."

Stark shook his head.

"Not the same thing," he said. "Jarvis is _in_ that body. That personality, that mind, is based off of his programming, it _is_ him."

She looked at him.

"It is," he reiterated, firmly.

"Is that why you don't talk to him?" she wondered. "So you can keep pretending that you didn't kill your friend while you were chasing down your goals?"

Stark looked like she'd slapped him, and then he looked furious, and then, somehow, terrifyingly, he looked on the verge of tears, instead.

"I'm just giving him space," he insisted.

"Good job. You've given him so much space, he doesn't even know you," she replied, and then, at last, he let her walk away.

~l~

It didn't long, after, for Vision to find her. She felt him prodding at her in one of the spare training rooms, an inquisitive mental once-over before he came into the room.

"You had a run-in with Mr. Stark," he surmised.

"No one knew he was coming?" she wondered. "A little warning would have been nice."

"He didn't announce his arrival," Vision told her.

"Typical. Asshole."

She paused, and took a moment to run a hand anxiously through her hair. Tony fucking Stark. That man's very existence had a way of dredging up every bad memory in her, from childhood to her 'volunteer' days with HYDRA to Ultron's devastation of Sokovia. It felt like she was back at square one, back to where she'd been immediately after everything had happened.

The soothing touch at the back of her mind came with a physical touch to her shoulder.

"He has gone now," Vision assured her.

"Did he speak to you?" she wondered.

He shook his head.

"He doesn't, generally. I think I make him uncomfortable."

"And you?" she prodded. "What do you think of him?"

Vision paused, considering the question. She let herself feel the way his mind turned it over, rolling along with the gentlest waves of thought. It was soothing.

"I think he is a brilliant man. I owe much to him," he finally said. "I do not think he is a malicious individual, though I think he struggles to foresee the consequences of his own actions, and those actions often result in… suffering. But the same traits that have caused suffering have also led to my existence. I know Ultron despised him, and I believe he may despise himself, but as to my own feelings…" he hesitated, uncertain, and she felt them rise up to the surface. "I'm unsure of how to define them."

Wanda could recognize them a little better.

She closed her eyes, and let out a breath.

And made a choice.

For him.

"That's because there are so many. Like pity," she said, gently pulling it to the forefront. "Worry." She prodded that emotion in turn. "Fondness. Pride. Resentment. Confusion. Insecurity."

She mulled over the last, and then turned around to face him.

"Grief," she identified.

Vision shook his head.

"I don't know why I should grieve him, when he is perfectly well," he confessed.

"I don't think it's him you grieve for," she replied, pointlessly smoothing the shoulder of his cape under her hand. "I think part of you grieves the loss of what friendship you had with him."

He was silent, for a moment, and she could feel his turmoil, like but also utterly unlike her own. Even this, she thought, _even this_ Tony Stark had to find a way to injure, to stick his unwelcome neck in. The man was a scourge on her life story, and he didn't even have the decency to acknowledge it.

Dear god how she wanted to light him on fire.

"Not everything is his fault," Vision gently chided her.

"I'll blame him for what _is_ his damn fault, though," she insisted, lowering her hand and folding her arms. She looked down and away.

"I'm sorry he upset you."

"You don't have to apologize for him."

"I know that, and yet… I don't know why, but I wish the two of you did not come into conflict with one another."

The confession, and the sincerity behind it, made her want to scream.

"I know," she said, instead. "You wish we could get along."

Vision didn't confirm it, but then, he didn't need to.

She let out a frustrated growl.

"Why did it have to be Tony _fucking_ Stark?!" she demanded of the universe in general.

"Wanda?" he asked, taken aback by her outburst.

"It's fine," she said. "It's fi… it's, no, it's not _fine_ , it's a disaster, he killed my parents, I can't forgive him for that, I _can't._ I don't know how to do it! How do you forgive someone who has taken something so precious from you? Where do you find that kindness? How do you, how do you face the memories of the people you've lost when you even _consider_ it?"

"Wanda," Vision said, resting his hands on her shoulders. She looked up at him, at his eyes, felt the wash of his concern. "You don't have to forgive him."

She shook her head.

"I don't want to make you choose," she admitted. "He cares about you. In his own fucked up way. I know how precious it is, to have someone who cares about you. Especially when you have so few people who do."

"Does he really?" he wondered. "Have you seen it, in his mind?"

"I didn't exactly go rooting around," she confessed.

Vision shook his head.

"I am not what he wanted me to be," he said. "I am another disappointment, only of a different sort from Ultron. I don't think I aspire to be Tony Stark's disappointment. I don't want the dregs of his affection for someone else, I would rather build new relationships with people who accept me as I am."

"But you still want to have _something_ with him," she prodded.

"That may not be possible," he said. "We don't always get what we want."

With a sigh, she leaned in to him.

"I don't want you to not get what you want because of me," she told him.

"It wouldn't be because of you," he assured her.

 _Would too,_ she thought, but she let him change the subject, then, distract her by asking whether or not she managed to have breakfast yet, or if she'd just locked herself in a room and started blasting things with her powers. The answer was fairly obvious.

"Fine, we'll go get something to eat," she conceded. "But we have to stop by the rec room first, I need to put about ten dollars into the captain's jar."

"I suppose it was that kind of morning."

She granted him an emphatic nod of agreement.

~l~

The next time she saw Tony Stark, it was at some godawful fundraiser type thing that she'd been strong-armed into attending for publicity's sake. It was showy, pointless extravagance, and she spent most of her time wanting to throw most of the guests out of the nearest window.

Black Widow was shadowing her in a way that implied that she was entirely aware of her state of mind and prepared to intervene, and had a habit of especially turning up at her shoulder every time some ridiculous American socialite started treating the Vision like a clever parlor trick.

"It's so life-like," one woman gushed, and actually reached over and _poked_ him.

"Pardon me," Vision said, politely, and withdrew a few steps back.

"Just let me break a couple of her fingers," Wanda muttered darkly.

"Not in front of witnesses," Black Widow replied, reaching over to grab the full, now-flat glass of Champaign Wanda had been carrying around since the function started, and downing it in one go. She replaced it with a new one from a passing tray.

"Okay. You tell me when she goes to head home, then."

The comment earned her a smirk.

That was when she spotted Stark, passing through a throng of guests, looking crisp and tidy in his expensive suit. Wanda's own dress probably cost more money than she'd ever had in her life. It was hard to move her arms in. She suspected that may have been deliberate.

"Excuse me," she said, and Black Widow raised an eyebrow at her as she started heading for the man of the hour.

"Stark!" she called out.

Stark paused, and then stared at her, a little taken aback.

"Maximoff," he greeted, glancing around the room. "There are a lot of witnesses."

"So everyone keeps telling me," she replied.

"It's the murderous glares. Kind of noticeable. Maybe if you got a nice pair of sunglasses or something…"

"Don't worry, I don't think I could attack you without ripping my dress anyway."

He gave her a pointed once-over.

"Well now. That would be a shame," he said, one corner of his mouth curving flirtatiously, but it was hollow, habitual. There was no spark of interest in him, and for that she was infinitely glad – it would have been complicated if she'd had to kill him right then.

"I don't have time for your bullshit," she announced, instead. "If you're going to be a big enough ass to 'invite' us to this fucking farce, then the least you can do is keep your idiot guests from getting their greasy fingerprints all over the person you've proclaimed your 'son'."

"I wouldn't say that I actually proclaimed him _my_ _son-"_

"Go stand next to him and make sure nobody touches him while I'm in the bathroom or I will put your fucking balls in a vice, and I don't care what kind of fancy prison they send me to afterwards," she said, and then she turned and found herself face-to-face with a pretty blonde woman she'd only seen before in newspapers and magazines.

Pepper Potts.

"You must be Wanda Maximoff," Pepper Potts said.

Wanda glanced at her, then at Stark, then linked her arm through the other woman's.

"You're coming with me to the bathroom," she announced.

"Is this a kidnapping?" Ms Potts wondered, but she didn't resist.

"I'm going to ransom you against Stark's good behaviour," Wanda replies. "Also I don't want you helping him."

"Hey," Stark objected.

But Ms Potts only shrugged and came along. She was a lovely woman, elegant in her gown, with her hair perfectly coiled and a warm smile under sharp eyes. She reminded Wanda of a very well-kempt wolf.

When they got to the bathroom, Ms Potts unlinked her arm and walked over to the mirror.

"Thank you," she said, immediately. "I've been trying to get Tony to talk to him for months."

"Vision?"

"Yes. Him," Ms Potts agreed, checking her make-up, and then pulling back a moment later in satisfaction. Wanda started at her for a moment, and then turned to the other mirror. A strand of her hair had gotten loose. She carefully started pushing it back into place.

"Here, I have a spare clip," Ms Potts offered, producing one from the folds of her clutch. "I have to admit, I'm surprised _you_ helped. I would have thought you'd prefer to keep the two of them apart."

"And pass up the change to torment Stark?" Wanda replied, tentatively accepting the offered hair piece.

Ms Potts gave her a knowing look.

"You're not doing this to torment Tony," she said.

"Aren't I?"

"I could be wrong, but you don't strike me as the kind of person who would put someone you care about in that position just to take a petty jab at someone you hate," the other woman declared.

Wanda considered her options, and then shrugged.

"You're right," she said. "I'm not."

"So you're doing this for Vision," Ms Potts surmised.

"Are you surprised that I would?"

"A little. I'm more relieved that someone close to him seems to think he should interact with Tony," Ms Potts admitted. "That might mean he wants to."

Wanda tilted her head, contemplating the woman beside her. The bathroom door opened, and she shifted slightly to let another party-goer head for the stalls.

"I suppose you were familiar with Jarvis. The program?" she wondered.

"He was more like a friend than a program," Ms Potts replied.

"I confess, I am a little curious about him," Wanda said. "When I first saw… Ultron's mind was filled with destruction. Vision's mind was so different. It stands to reason that was because of Jarvis."

"I always thought there was more to him than even Tony knew," Ms Potts confessed.

"Vision isn't him, though."

"That's what he says."

"No," Wanda insisted. "If this is going to work, everyone needs to understand. He is not Jarvis. You and Stark get your heads around it, deal with… whatever you need to deal with because of it. But, he is what he says he is. And if you can't handle that, then, maybe it's better if you _do_ keep your distance. For everyone's sake."

"You never knew Jarvis," Ms Potts said.

"No. And I never will, because he is gone," Wanda replied, and uncomfortably excused herself.

Stupid. What was she thinking? Stark and his people, they only cared about their little group. They only wanted their missing puzzle piece back. She'd sympathize with them, if she didn't already despise them.

The things she was doing. These people were going to be the death of her.

She looked up across the party, though, and saw Stark standing where she'd told him to. There was tension in the air between himself and Vision. Discomfort. She could feel flashes of uncertainty, surprisingly strong from the both of them, but there was something else underneath that. Something so beautiful it swept a little bit of her breath away.

Wanda let out a heavy sigh.

"The death of me," she murmured.

But it felt less dire now, somehow.


End file.
